


Every Bridge We Build

by NotLaura



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-26
Updated: 2016-01-26
Packaged: 2018-05-16 11:53:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5827609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NotLaura/pseuds/NotLaura
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lead me to the edge and watch / See how far we both can drop</p>
            </blockquote>





	Every Bridge We Build

**Author's Note:**

  * For [muchmoxie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/muchmoxie/gifts).



> Caryler Secret Santa present for hoookedswan on tumblr. lyrics are Tom McRae, Walking2Hawaii, which is a great song. Thanks to my awesome friend Heather for the quick and dirty beta as I tried valiantly to get this done in time!

-

_Falling Feels Like Flying_

-

On a quiet night in Alexandria, she kisses him.

It’s slow and it’s sweet and Carol’s mouth tastes like everything he loves in the world. Her palms open against his chest, he can feel the warmth of them through his shirt. It’s somewhere between the satisfaction of landing a perfect shot and the relief of seeing your family safe after being apart. Every good feeling Daryl’s ever had is in the press of Carol’s lips on his.

They’re at the top of the stairs, outside her bedroom door and his hair is wet from the shower he’s just come from. The cotton of her pajamas is soft and warm beneath his fingers, curled gently against her hips.

He can’t help but lean forward, chasing her mouth when she pulls back and she’s smiling at him with tear-filled eyes when he finally looks at her.

Daryl knows he could run, knows he just needs to step back and duck his head and Carol will retreat into her bedroom. Another small step along the road of their relationship, he needs to process it and adjust before it can be repeated. Their path is indirect, but they’ll end up in the same place if they keep travelling along it.

She expects him to, it’s written all over her beautiful face. She won’t hold it against him, she knows him in her soul and her heart and the safety of being so completely understood by someone else is enough to banish the final tethers of fear that hold him back.

Daryl’s hands tighten on her hips and he grins at the quick flash of shock on her face as he pulls her back against him. His kiss is just as chaste, but the way she sighs into it will be seared into his bones forever.

This is it. Their moment is finally here and something in his chest feels light and giddy. The distance that’s been growing between them since the prison is finally gone and there’s no reason to keep his heart close. They have a home and they have safety and he’s holding Carol in his arms.

For the first time in his life, Daryl has everything he wants.

She reaches up, hands cupping his jaw and opening her mouth below his. Her tongue, clever and slick, slides against his lips and it’s his turn to sigh as he lets her in without hesitation.

Then Carol is walking backwards, pulling him along into her room and he closes the door behind them. Her hands leave his face, pressing against his chest in a caress that makes him shiver and when her fingertips slip under the bottom of his shirt, graze the skin of his stomach just above his belt, he finally pulls his mouth from hers.

With his forehead pressed against hers, Daryl says the words that have been riding around in his heart since well before they left the prison.

“Love you.”

Her tears are back and she presses her eyes closed. “Oh, Daryl.” Her voice is quiet and pained and laced with so many things he wants to protect her from.

“It’s you and me now,” the words spill out without his permission, desperate to get rid of everything that dares to hurt her. “Whatever happens, it’s you and me. We start over, we try, together. No more shutting me out. From now on, together.”

He punctuates the plea by taking her hands, pulling them away from the skin he desperately wants her to touch and squeezing them tight in his own. He needs her to understand what this is, needs her to know that it’s not about kissing or fucking or holding, it’s about being and existing and trusting. This isn’t another step, it’s the end of the road, the destination, the final leap off the precipice into forever.

He’d always thought Carol would be the one to jump, pulling him along with her.

“Together.” She repeats the affirmation, tears falling down her cheeks as she looks at him. “I wish…” Daryl’s heart is in his throat at the tearful misery on her face but she swallows, blinks rapidly several times, and then gifts him with the most beautiful smile he’s ever seen.

“I love you, Daryl.”

This time there’s nothing chaste. It’s easy to let her take the lead from there, and Carol’s agenda leaves no room for questions as she gets him out of his clothes and on the bed. Even as she takes off her pajamas, even as his mouth goes dry at the sight of her breasts and stomach and thighs being bared, he feels like he’s at the start of the rest of his life.

He makes love to her like he’ll never do anything more important, like every gasp and moan and whisper is a secret just between them. More than that, more than her nails on his back or his lips at her throat, Carol looks alive while he’s inside of her. Alive in a way he hasn’t seen since the prison, as though whatever haunts her has been pushed out of her heart and he’s taken its place.

After, before the sweat has dried on their bodies, he reaches for her hand, lacing their fingers together over his heart and pulls her close. Carol curls into his chest, still trembling from how good it had been, how alive he’d made her feel.

When he sleeps, naked and warm and with the woman he loves, Daryl dreams of forever.

-

_Until you hit the ground_

-

In sheets too cool to have been abandoned recently, Daryl wakes up alone.

He’s disoriented, blinking at the empty room as his eyes adjust to the slivers of sunrise from the window. He can still feel her on his skin, her hands and her lips and her declarations of love branded into him like marks of ownership.

Something like dread settles in his chest as he slowly rises, mentally flipping through a dozen reasons she isn’t there. She’s making breakfast, she needed a moment, she’s just getting a drink.

His clothes are folded atop the dresser. He stares at them, wondering how he possibly slept through her getting out of bed, getting dressed, tidying things… He was a light sleeper before the world ended and even in the safety of Alexandria he’s startled awake in the middle of the night for something as simple as a creak in the floorboards.

Something flutters to the ground when he reaches for his pants.

Not bothering with his belt, Daryl pulls his jeans over his hips and holds the scrap of folded paper in his hand. His name is on the front, her neat handwriting making him think of prison watch schedules written in chalk and displayed in the common room.

The dread in his chest expands to panic, creeps into his stomach and he sits on the edge of the mattress before opening the note.

_Daryl, I’m so sorry. Last night was the greatest night of my life. I don’t deserve that, I can’t let myself feel that kind of joy. Not while they’re all dead. I’ve loved you since Georgia, but I can’t do this to you. Not now, after everything I’ve done. I’ll have you in my heart forever. Please don’t follow me. I’m running out of lives and I couldn’t bear to burden you with what I’ve turned into. I’m sorry I’ve done this to you, I’m sorry I couldn’t be strong enough to let you go. You’re the best man I’ve ever known, Daryl, but I’m not a woman worth your heart. Goodbye, stay safe._

A single sob is wrenched from his chest, and Daryl drops the paper, presses the heels of his hands to his eyes and tells himself it’s what he should have expected.

Reaching for forever was a risk, and like with anything else in his life that’s ever been good: Daryl Dixon comes up short.

-

_And everything is beautiful_

-

On a quiet night in Alexandria, she kisses him.

It’s an impulse, a desperate need that’s coiled inside her heart for longer than Carol really knows. This new world feels like all she’s ever known, sometimes. Loving Daryl feels like all she can do.

The promises he speaks against her skin draw her in, wrap her in the safety of love. She remembers then, after Terminus, how he’d run at her and wrapped her up and held her as though his entire world aligned around her. All of her fear, every worry that she wouldn’t be welcomed, it was all knocked out of her with the force of Daryl’s embrace.

His words of love, his promises for the future, they’re no different.

He touches her like she’s special, like she’s treasured, like she isn’t a murderer or a failure or a mother with no children. She’s no one’s wife, no one’s property, no one’s liability… Beneath Daryl’s hands she is only Carol.

It’s been so long since her identity has been that simple.

They lay on sheets with a thread count higher than the total of all the beds she’d ever slept on before the world ended, Daryl’s head resting below her breasts and the panic sets in.

No. This isn’t her. This can’t be. She doesn’t get this. He deserves better. She needs to go, needs to escape, needs to solve the problem.

With practiced steps she slips from the bed. It’s easy, to fall back into the habit of being less than a shadow. There’s a tightness inside of her, as her armor knits together to keep away the pain.

Her heart is left on the paper, she has no use for it now.

It’s a silly thing, niggling in the back of her mind. A fleeting thought that maybe she was proving herself the coward she swore she’d left behind. Her hand pressed to her breastbone, Carol leans against the wall and wills herself to be strong.

She couldn’t run, before. The fear had kept her in place. Fear of the future, fear of failure, fear of retribution… What she has now is a different sort of fear altogether. A fear of being happy, a fear or letting herself have something…

With Ed, fear had kept her from running.

With Daryl, she is given the freedom to be afraid.

She doesn’t make it out the gates.

-

_‘Till you take a look around_

-

He’s buttoning his shirt when she comes back to the bedroom. Hands paused, he looks at her from behind shutters Carol hasn’t seen from him in years. They’re incomplete, an attempt to find somewhere safe to hide after she’s validated every shitty thought he’s ever had about himself.

“I’m scared.”

She lets the bedroom door click closed behind her.

Daryl is quiet for a long time, frozen in place as though he’s wounded. She hates that she’s done this, hates that she’s taken away the openness he has given her since that day outside of Terminus.

“Of what?” His voice is gruff, a little dry, and Carol can see the shyness in his gaze.

“Of trying.” The answer comes out before she knows what it is and the words snap something into place. She’s afraid to try, afraid to put herself out there only to end up torn apart again. Again and again and again and…

But Daryl looks at her with such love, has given her so much support, has held her far more tenderly than she thought to deserve.

He won’t let her fail.

Her hand trembles as she reached for him, laying it against the side of his neck, but her voice is steady. “Together?”

There’s a thousand questions in that word and they’re all answered in the way Daryl’s entire heart is in his eyes.

“Together.”

Running away might be the easier option, but he gives her the choice, and that’s everything.

Carol can do this.

They can do this.

Together.

  
  


-

_So let it go_

-

 

 

 


End file.
